Wii Fanboy hands-on: Deca Sports

Imagine our delight when we had a brown envelope from Hudson sitting on our doorstep Friday afternoon. As we opened the parcel up, we found the above items: a preview copy of Deca Sports and this sweet little wristband. Huzzah!

But, woe was us for we would not be able to just play and selfishly enjoy the four available sports on the demo disc by our lonesome (or with some friends). Oh no, we have a job and have to let our readers know what we think. So that's what we did. But, we didn't just settle for playing the included sports and writing up a preview. No, instead we decided that we'd do a nice little video for you. And for all of you who enjoy reading things, we wrote up our opinions as well.

So head on past the break for our hands-on look at Deca Sports for the Wii!

The four available sports on this demo build are Badminton, Figure Skating, Supercross and Beach Volleyball. As we sat at the main screen showing off the 10 available sports in the game (six of which were, obviously, grayed out and unselectable), we wondered which should be played first. Should it be a sport we had high hopes for before going in to this? Or, should we try one of the sports we doubted? Well, we decided to go for the first sport that we would never find ourselves participating in (unless we were, like, possessed by another being that could control our actions or something) out in the real world: Figure Skating.

The premise of Figure Skating in Deca Sports is that you perform a routine, set to music, that very much resembles what one might see done in the Olympics or something. You have traditional Figure Skating maneuvers here that the player performs through a bit of waggle. See, you use the nunchuk's analog stick to navigate your skater along a line of yellow dots, and on this path you'll come across large circles that vary in color (red, green, blue, etc). Once inside these circles, all you need to do is shake the Wiimote in any way and you'll perform the routine's designated maneuver. The sport is very much easy to excel in, which is kind of its downfall. You see, with only three different routines available, along with the natural ease of it all, we found little replay valu in this. The initial play was incredibly fun, but after the second time running through a routine, we were ready for something else.

After that, it was off to warmer climates, namely the beach. Here, we put on our suits and decided to partake in some Beach Volleyball. Easily tied as the most fun sport in this demo build, it plays very much like Wii Sports: Tennis does. The game controls your player's movement, while you're charged with keeping the ball in play. The controls are a little more fleshed out than in Figure Skating, as you can perform different serves and volleys, along with the always-fun spiking that permeates the sport. Playing is incredibly easy, although we should say that it's a big pet peeve of ours that we cannot control our player's movement on the court. We HATE the game taking over player movement, because it often leads to missed opportunities in the game or our player running around like they just got a complimentary free bowl of soup with their lobotomy. But, as said, overall it's a blast.

Next up was Supercross. This was a major letdown, as the motion controls felt incredibly touchy and unresponsive. Turning smoothly was an impossibility for us, causing us to hit the guard rails and miss transition opportunities on jumps left and right. The controls, which handle more or less exactly the same as Nintendo's Excite Truck, never once felt consistent or familiar. Instead, we felt like we were trying to drive an alien spaceship each and every time we picked up the Wiimote to play.

Finally, we came to Badminton, which is anything but bad. It's tied with Beach Volleyball as our favorite sport of the bunch. Again, our complaint is that the game handles moving your player around the court, but outside of that, we found the controls to be inviting and the sessions to be furious and fun. Often we would be taking matches down to the wire, fighting with our opponent for supremacy on the virtual court up until the last point. And for those of you unfamiliar with the sport, it plays a lot like Tennis, except you aren't smacking around a ball and the shuttle can never touch the ground. If anything, it's some kind of weird mix between Tennis and Volleyball.

There you have it. Our time with Hudson's Deca Sports was overall very fun and enjoyable. We're anxious to try the remaining 6 sports in the bunch, as this preview disc has us craving more. Hudson may very well have a success on their hands, even with the almost unplayable Supercross. But, hey, you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, right?